Tips and Tricks

We've added some useful features for handling comments: when viewing an article with comments within the administration pages of your blog (or portal), you can mark multiple comments and delete them all at once - way easier than confirming every single deletion of each comment.

Also, the comment monitoring feature now also removes the corresponding comments. Confused? Well, in order to be informed about new comments, we distinguish the comment and a notification about that comment. The comment notification screen displays all notifications about new comments. If you've read them, you can delete those notifications, and the comments will still be accessible on the blog. However, if you wanted to delete both the notification and the comment, you'd have to switch to each article where a comment was posted, and remove that comment manually. Now, when deleting a notification, we simply ask whether you merely want to remove the notification or the comment as well. Way easier.

More improvements coming soon!

Now that you know how to add a widget to your blog, you might want to check out www.widgetbox.com. On that site you have a huge collection of thousands of widgets - and you can even create a widget of your own blog, so others can add your latest entries to their blogs. How cool's that?

Adding a widget is failry easy. At Widgetbox, you can preview the widget before adding it, then create one specific for your blog. You can even select width and height - at least those I've played around with offered those features (keep in mind the width of around 200 pixels for your standard blog sidebar). Next, you click "Get widget". A small list of options opens. There, choose "Get Widget Code". Then either copy the Javascript or the Flash code into your sidebar - as I described in the previous article. Should be up to you what code you copy, though I've taken the Javascript code.

Ever came accross a blog displaying some cool add-on in the sidebar? Like displaying the local weather or a counter? These small items are called widgets. The web already offers a large number of widgets, so you'll definitely find something you like. And there's nothing easier to add HTML-based widgets to your blog, or even to all blogs within your portal. When choosing a widget, please note that you should stick to the width of your sidebar, which is usually between 180 and 200 pixels. In case you can choose a width for the widget, try those values since they should match best.

So here's a short how-to for your portal and a blog, once you've received your widget code:

1. Adding a widget to your blog
You need to be logged in and navigate to your blog administration pages. There, you navigate to "Weblog -> More options -> Sidebar". On that page, simply paste the HTML code for the widget into the text are labeled "Source code". Save it and you're done.

2. Adding a widget to your portal
Again, you need to be logged in and navigate to your administration pages, this time as a portal administrator. Next, go to "Layout -> More options -> Buttons". You'll see the editor where you can enter sidebar information for all your members. There, click the little "HTML" icon in the editor's menu bar and paste your widget code into it. Then, click "Update", choose the visibility of that widget, and click "Save".

Tipp: In case you want to have your widget be centered horizontally within your sidebar, you can easily do this as follows: before the beginning of your widget code, put this code:

<div align="center">

and after the end of your code put

</div>

 That's it. Enjoy your widgets!

Ever thought of posting a poll for your readers? Well, it's easier than you think. There are many free poll tools out there, whereas this time my choice is Quimble. Just sign up for a free account and start create your own polls. You will then be provided with an HTML-code, which you can either integrate in your sidebar of your portal or blog or within an entry.

Please notice: before you paste your code in the editor, make sure you disabled javascript at your browser. Once pasted, you enable it again and voila, you will hae your poll. This also works for other scripts, which include javascript. Here is an example:

So now everything's all new and shiny but you just can't find your favorite menu items from last week? Do not head for the panic room, since we have still included your good companion the "All Features" list at the top right corner of the screen. One click takes you to a list of all available features and you can use your browser's search feature to look for them in their names and descriptions. Once on the index page windows users press Ctrl-F and type their keyword while mac users will press Command-F. So easy!

Now that we have deployed this major update (and by major i mean huge!) there might still be some minor glitches in combination with extensively customized and old layouts. Please keep us posted on these! Either here or right here...

Now it's back to the drawing board for some more nifty improvements. AJAX anyone?